Nietzsche is a dipshit, maybe not in your opinion but his philosophy is like a how to guide for being an elitist asshole. Also, his writing style is square-peg-round-hole retarded. He pulls the wool over your eyes the whole book, he never really says anything.

Socrates is really quite interesting. One of his ideas- people would never do anything wrong if they knew it was wrong.

I wouldn't call that a discussion, but it made me come ack to this thread, so thats good. For anyone who didn't know, Mick Foley is coming to Adventurecon, and he is the best, most hardcore wrestler of all time. Now, he wrote 2 autobiographies, and I have both, I will be re-reading them come 4th 9 wks, and anyone who would like to read them is more than welcome to borrow whichever one I'm not reading at the time.

the jedi order is like the higher ups of a church and the general populace answers to them and trusts them because they know more of the universe and its infinite possibilities. The force is a mystical and all powerful "substance"

What lucas did is copy/paste fundemental taoism while editing parts of it to make for more violence.

Evidence of Lucas faggotry:Tao Te Ching chapter 51 part 2 The Tao give birth to all things Nourishes them, maintains them, Cares for them, comforts them, and protects them Creating without possessing Act without expecting Guides without interfering. That is why the love of the Tao It's in the very nature of things

sounds a lot like the force doesn't it? As a matter of fact, it becomes downright plaigarism in A New Hope:What does the force do again? Gives us life Protects us from danger Gives us strengthLoans us its power to assist us in our lives as we train and protect those who need our assistance. - Ben Kenobi

Next point:Tao Te Ching chapter 5 part 1 The Tao does not take sides It gives birth to both good and evil The master does not take sides He welcomes both saints and sinners.

This is where it starts to differentiate, Lucas sees this and thinks to himself "geez, it would sure be boring if everyone had to open themselves to all spectrums of the force and couldn't be important otherwise", so he omits this bit , not completely mind you, but he makes the typical western mistake. He looks at the force, the tao, and he sees the yin-yang symbol. Now this is his mistake, he sees the Yin-Yang as 2 symbols competing when any true taoist will tell you that the tao (yin-yang in this case) is one thing, and one complete thing.

Furthermore:The Jedi Code There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force.

This is another place where the tao and jedi-ism differ. The jedi have a code, and refer to themselves as an order and they follow the rules of a ruling group. This is despicable to the taoist, as these people, by seeking knowledge and order, undermine what they attempt to understand. In other words, their knowledge is useless, and they are better examples of the tao (ie: conduits for the force) the less they attempt to gain knowledge. This may lead some to think that Lucas is attempting to use his own philosophy here, but again, no, he is just combining taoism and confuscanism. It is often said in confuscianism, that order and perfection are the desired traits, in fact, "if the rug is not straight, the master will not sit" is a common confuscian saying. now, on to picking apart the code:

There is no emotion, there is peace; this is essentially the taoist principle of Pu (literally uncarved wood), it describes a state of passive receptiveness to the ways the universe works or the tao

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge; this is confuscianism, basically its about devoting oneself to a life of study in order to gain better understanding of the universe (taoist would be firmly against this)

There is no passion, there is serenity; almost the exact same thing as the first principle of the jedi code, essentially filler used to take up space

There is no death, there is the Force; this is just Lucas saying that people continue to live by becoming part of the force (tao) which spawned them and all others, this is a fundamental idea of taoism

This leads me to believe that Lucas was hardly a philosopher since he couldn't come up with a single original philosophy. Not to say that people who can't come up with their own philosophies aren't philosophers, just saying that Lucas paired ideas that are illogical to pair in the name of logic and thus fails.

I personally think that although this instance, and many others may be true, that people tend to think things out for themselves and come up with strikingly similar ideas.

I myself for instance to not make a point to study theism or theology in any way shape or form. People tell me that I am a this-ism or that-iest, but have never read anything by this or that. I have come to these conclusions as to what I believe almost wholly by myself. And although I'm sure that if I did study or at least read about some of these things that people say I am, I would agree with a lot of it, but I would almost as certainly disagree with parts of it.

My philosophy comes directly from me not from the influences (as far as I can tell) of other thinkers.